McGrew by 2 - for now

After two recounts on Wednesday, Whitefish City Council candidate Martin McGrew has emerged the winner by a two-vote margin in a tight race with Turner Askew.

Unofficial election results posted Tuesday night initially showed Askew the winner with 608 votes and McGrew with 604.

But recounts on Wednesday put McGrew slightly ahead, with 694 votes to Askew's 692.

Askew said Wednesday evening that he has not yet decided whether he will request a hand recount. He would have to pay for a recount, but is eligible because the margin separating the two candidates was 14/100ths of 1 percent.

Candidates have five days after the election results are canvassed to request the recount.

"I've volunteered and participated in hand counts and having done that, I'm convinced you'll get a different vote number," Askew said. "But I'll have to think about it. My inclination right now is I don't think I want to do it, but I may have a different answer in the morning. The nice thing is I don't have to decide right away."

WHILE VOTER turnout was at about 60 percent for Whitefish's first-ever mail-ballot city council election, the process was not without glitches.

About three dozen ballots were ripped or chopped up by a machine that opens the envelopes. That prompted election officials to piece the torn ballots back together and fill out a new ballot for that voter that could be run through the scanning machine.

Thirty-three ballots were returned unsigned, which invalidated them. Election Manager Monica Eisenzimer said her department attempted to contact voters who failed to sign their ballots. Of the 3,825 ballots mailed out, about 800 were returned as undeliverable for a number of reasons such as wrong addresses.

There were 615 under-votes - ballots on which voters had marked one or two council candidates' names and not the required three selections. Under-vote ballots are still counted.

Not counted were four dozen over-vote ballots, on which voters had cast votes for more than three candidates. If someone voted for four of the seven council candidates, those ballots were thrown out because there is no way to know which three candidates the voter intended to choose, said Anita Hoye, a member of the Election Department's three-person resolution committee that monitored questionable ballots.

THE OPTICAL scanning machine used for the initial vote count didn't tally as many votes as a larger scanning machine used in Wednesday's recount. For example, council incumbent John Muhlfeld won 1,001 votes in the initial count, but got 1,141 in the second count. Muhlfeld won his bid for council.

Ryan Friel also won a council seat, getting 1,003 votes in the second count, up from 874 votes in the first count.

Eisenzimer said election officials used Election Systems & Software's Model 100, a scanner normally sent out to polling places to scan and tabulate votes.

"We had talked to other county election clerks who said the M100 is better for absentee ballots and is quicker," she said.

But during the late-night crunch to get finished, election officials fed the ballots too fast through the M100, causing it to jam, Eisenzimer explained. She said she thought about doing a recount Tuesday evening on the Model 650, the scanner usually used at the election department, but it was already past 11 p.m.

On Wednesday, she used the M650 for the recounts.

NEW TALLIES in the mayoral race put winner Mike Jenson at 1,008 votes, incumbent Cris Coughlin at 745 and Nick Palmer at 93.

Jenson said Wednesday he was appreciative of the support he received.

"It's humbling to know that kind of support is out there for you," Jenson said.

A Whitefish native, Jenson served as Whitefish mayor from 1998 to 2000 and said he sees the mayor's role as one of guidance, a mediator who can facilitate change by weighing both sides of an issue.

"The first order of business is to try and bring the rhetoric down and see if we can't get everyone talking again," Jenson said about the divisiveness that has flared up recently in Whitefish over issues such as the controversial critical areas ordinance. "It's time to impart a little healing."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com